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The Political Attitudes and Preferences of Union Members: The Case of the Detroit Auto Workers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Harold L. Sheppard  and
Nicholas A. Masters
Harold L. Sheppard
Affiliation:
Wayne State University
Nicholas A. Masters
Affiliation:
Wayne State University
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Extract

The emergence of American labor unions to positions of actual or potential power as organized forces in election campaigns has stirred a great deal of controversy over the limits and propriety of union political activity. A decade and more after the Taft-Hartley Act provisions on that subject, argument continues as vigorously as ever about the need for, and if a need, then the nature and extent of, legal controls over the power of union leaders to enlist and commit their membership to electioneering goals. Underlying many of these debates is the complex question of union membership solidarity in political affairs. For if, to some, solidarity suggests dangers, it also indicates difficulties in the way of making controls effective. Yet we have only begun to explore the solidarity of rank-and-file attitudes toward union political activity.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , June 1959 , pp. 437 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1959

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References

1 A few studies have been devoted to this problem: see Bernstein, Irving, “John L. Lewis and the Voting Behavior of the C.I.O.,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 5 (1941), pp. 233–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hudson, Ruth Alice and Rosen, Hjalmar, “Union Political Action: The Union Member Speaks,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 7 (1954), pp. 404–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kornhauser, Arthur, Sheppard, Harold L., and Mayer, Albert J., When Labor Votes: A Study of Auto Workers (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; Rosen, Hjalmar and Hudson, R. A., The Union Member Speaks (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Sheppard, Harold L. and Masters, Nicholas, “Union Political Action and Public Opinion Polls in a Democratic Society,” Social Problems, Vol. 5 (July 1957), pp. 14–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Truman, David B., The Governmental Process (New York, 1951) pp. 298–299Google Scholar.

3 The New Men of Power (New York, 1948) p. 236Google Scholar.

4 Hudson, Ruth Alice and Rosen, Hjalmar, “Union Political Action: The Union Member Speaks,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 7 (1954) p. 418CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Kornhauser, Arthur, Sheppard, Harold L., and Mayer, Albert J., When Labor Votes: A Study of Auto Workers (New York, 1956), pp. 262–299Google Scholar.

6 The two studies utilized different sampling techniques, the earlier one being based on membership lists of the union, and the later one on dwelling units. Despite this difference in methodology, comparisons within certain limits are justified, in our opinion.

7 Truman, op. cit., p. 290.

8 Kornhauser, et al., op. cit., pp. 201–202.

9 Ibid. p. 203.

10 Because the 1956 sample did not include any of the “new” suburbs of Detroit it has a higher proportion of Negroes (and hence Protestants) than the 1952 sample.

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